Pulp Fraction

Last year during the holiday season, e-book sales on Amazon.com topped their print book sold for one day. But now that figure is the average, not the anomaly.

Figures from their second quarter show the company sold 143 e-books for every 100 hardcovers versions. And the rate is accelerating - in the past month, Amazon sold 180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers, and so far has sold three times as many e-books in the first six months of this year as it did in the first half of 2009. The Kindle bookstore now offers more than 630,000 books, Amazon says, plus 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright titles.

Overall, the e-book market is still dwarfed by the printed word. Publisher’s Weekly reported that hardback sales were projected to be about $4.4 billion in 2009 (including both adult and children’s titles) and paperbacks clocking nearly $5.1 billion. Audiobooks were expected to reach $218 million - far outpacing e-books at $81 million (that's lest than 1% of the print market. Their figures did not take into account textbooks, Bibles and professional books - that boosts the overall book market at $35 billion.

Naturally, online book sales are eclipsing print versions, and companies like Amazon have seen sales of its Kindle e-book reader tripled they dropped the price from $260 to $190. The Kindle has topped Amazon’s list of bestselling products since it's release in 2008, and there are Kindle reader apps for the iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android phones, and both Mac and Windows platforms.

And by comparison, the average hardcover book costs $26, while Kindle books are far less, and more than half a million titles in Amazon’s e-book catalog cost $10 or less. Their sales pitch is that 11 e-books would justify the cost of a $180 Kindle compared to buying all of the hardcover alternatives at full price. And they boost their profits since e-books cost virtually nothing to distribute. It may be a long time before brick-and-mortar stores are in trouble, but e-books are now dominating online stores.